Crisis Wire – Stay Informed During A Catastrophe

I just found about this new tool as the fires burned in Santa Barbara. And when I say, “brand new’, I mean it launched yesterday.With the Sylmar Fires burning today…they are quite busy already!This cool tool keeps you informed about disasters in real time using social media.

CrisisWire.comCrisiswire’s gathers information about crises. This site is contains real-time info about what’s happening during a crisis.

A bit brief right now, but hey, they’ve been up less than 24 hours. Let’s give them a break.Here’s the basic concept as I found out on Mashable, from site founder Nate Ritter:

“During a disaster people spend valuable time searching the Internet and waiting for the media to report on their city, their neighborhood, their street,” Nate told us. “While main stream media serves a vital role during disasters, it is impossible to update the population on everything that is happening during a crisis.”

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From a green and social responsibility standpoint, this is important news if it takes off. Each year disasters claim hundreds of thousands of homes, wilderness, animal habitats and businesses. This may turn out to be the best early response system we will have. Already MSM news sources are using it to update their reports.

I keep thinking back to 9/11 when I was working for a MSM broadcast company and we trolled the internet frantically from site to site to try to find information. This would have been perfect.

Ritter, a San Diego based web developer, cites his experience in the San Diego fires last year as inspiring him to develop this tool. He has been writing on his blog about how Twitter can be used by non-profits crisiswire , as well as, action plans on specifically how to engage use social media sites, including crisiswire in a disaster.

Using social media to do well, as well as, do good seems like a great combination.